Right now, you can only cast a vote at the end of the last chapter posted. So if you're reading a story and, say, in Chapter 2 you decide the story isn't good and plan to stop reading, it takes a few steps to go to the last chapter to cast your vote. How many people are motivated to do that extra work? It would be nice to be able to simply go to the bottom of the chapter you're on to vote.
One advantage for making this change would be for more people to score stories they don't finish.
One advantage for making this change would be for more people to score stories they don't finish.
Sounds like the perfect reason to keep things the way they are.
The whole idea of the voting is to vote on the story, not just a particular chapter (or 10).
If someone finds something bad enough that they bail out, they could always make a post in the comments (if it's enabled) if they feel strongly enough about it.
I am one of those that doesn't vote if i don't finish a story. For all i know, things might actually get better & it might be worth reading, so voting for a story based on just one small part of it isn't something i do.
And voting on one small part of a story is what the 1 bombers do- it might be a great story, but there's something in there that they take offence with, and so they ignore all the rest & Vote 1- just because.
If you don't read all of a story, you shouldn't vote on it IMHO.
If you don't read all of a story, you shouldn't vote on it IMHO.
I used to believe that.
I just abandoned a pocket novel. I believe those were published porn novels from the past. I did a Category Search on "pocket-novel" and sorted by score. It was the highest scored pocket novel — over 8. So I thought I'd read it.
I painfully struggled through Chapter 1. Chapter 2 was no better. I was partway through Chapter 3 when I gave up. It was horrendously written. And even though novels at the time were porn, it was crap porn. The content didn't bother me. The writing did. The dialogue did. There was no way the story could get better if I kept reading because of the way it was written.
And people score an individual chapter of a story all the time on serials. So that's expected.
I mean, I get both sides.
As an author, I wish for people to read my stories completely before passing judgment on them. But, as a reader, I find it hard to suffer through a book on the vague possibility of the author improving their abilities.
When I read a story here, and I have to read every paragraph three times to understand what the author is trying to say... then that's the experience I had with it, and that's what I base my impression of the story on. Jumping to the last chapter and rating it badly because of my impression is, in my view, a completely legitimate thing to do.
When I read a story here, and I have to read every paragraph three times to understand what the author is trying to say... then that's the experience I had with it, and that's what I base my impression of the story on. Jumping to the last chapter and rating it badly because of my impression is, in my view, a completely legitimate thing to do.
I disagree.
With a serial, you are voting chapter by chapter. With a finished story, you are voting for the complete story. If you didn't complete the story (for whatever reason), then you can't truly vote on the story- you are only voting on the part you read.
Whatever the reason- vote bombing a story is never right IMHO. And that is what you are doing- you didn't like a part of it, so you are down voting the entire thing. If you read it all the way through, and it sucked for whatever reason(s), then fair enough.
If i did as you do, then i would have never read The Preacher Man by hammingbyrd67 (which i just found to have vanished), and would have voted it as 3-4 stars.
The first chapter was large solid blocks of text, and it was all in the main character's head, with all sorts of odd terminology. But after starting & bailing out a couple of times, eventually i did make my way through that first chapter & finished the story and it was as the reviews said- a great story and deserving of it's rating.
Whatever the reason- vote bombing a story is never right IMHO.
Sure, I fully agree. Only problem is, rating a story badly after reading parts of it has absolutely nothing to do with vote-bombing. Vote-Bombing would be rating ALL of an author's stories badly out of principle. Like, an author writes Cuckolding-stories that I don't like, so I give all those stories a 1/10 rating without even reading them. THAT would be vote-bombing.
Rating a story badly because it was so bad I couldn't finish it IS a legitimate rating.
If I build a car that keeps flooding unless I push it beyond 50mph, then the car I build is shit. Coming up to customers who are complaining and telling them not to judge my car until they take it onto the highway and push the engine won't change that fact, because they can't even reach the damn highway. It is up to me, the one who built the shitty car, to go back and fix the flooding issue.
With a serial, you are voting chapter by chapter.
No. Once you cast a vote, it counts against the whole story. Individual chapters don't have their own ratings.
AJ
If you didn't complete the story (for whatever reason), then you can't truly vote on the story- you are only voting on the part you read.
Today, you can vote on the story even if you don't complete it. You simply have extra steps to take to get to the last chapter to cast that vote. My suggestion is to make that easier. It will also make it easier to remove it from my library.
I just got to thinking...
If I find a new story today that only has one chapter posted so far, and is listed as "To be continued", I can still vote on that.
Now, when the author posts more chapters to that story, or updates already posted chapters... does my vote get devalued? Or does my vote still go into the score calculation?
Now, when the author posts more chapters to that story, or updates already posted chapters... does my vote get devalued?
Unless you change your vote, it is what it is. There is no devaluing.
I don't read stories that aren't completed so I don't vote on a chapter.
With a serial, you are voting chapter by chapter. With a finished story, you are voting for the complete story. If you didn't complete the story (for whatever reason), then you can't truly vote on the story- you are only voting on the part you read.
With this thinking it appears to me that you are saying that the voting should be turned on only after the story in done.
With this thinking it appears to me that you are saying that the voting should be turned on only after the story in done.
That would be a shame because there many excellent stories on the site that are unfinished and are never likely to be :-(
AJ
With a serial, you are voting chapter by chapter
No - if you vote on every chapter as it is being posted you are simply revising the score you are awarding the overall story. I don't normally vote on incomplete stories, for the simple reason that I normally wait for the story to finish before starting to read it - but if I have faith that the author is very likely to complete the story I will start it early , vote after a couple of chapters and revise my vote as the serial unfolds.
If I feel a story is not worth me continuing with it (whether or not it is completed) I think it is fair to other readers to go to the end and vote on my impressions of the story (or more accurately, te part of the story I had read). My reasoning is that doing so best helps other readers.
(Of course if my reason for abandoning the story is that it contained elements that I should have expected - because of the tags or the blurb - then I don't vote: mea culpa, I should not have started reading it. A corollary: I don't read stories where the author says 'tags will be added as the story progresses' or 'tags have been omitted'.)
If you don't read all of a story, you shouldn't vote on it IMHO.
If you couldn't finish a story, that's all the more reason to vote because it obviously lacked appeal.
AJ
The whole idea of the voting is to vote on the story, not just a particular chapter (or 10).
A story has several aspects, such as: grammar, character development, plot, plot development, and appeal to the reader.
As a reader, you don't need to read the entire story to determine the author's performance on the above aspects. All a reader needs is one or two chapters to determine their opinion of the story and come to a decision on its rating. If the author's ability to craft a story is so poor that you want to bail after the first or second chapter, then there is no reason to torture yourself by reading the rest of the story.
Switch Blade's suggestion eliminates the process of getting to the end of the last posted chapter. The suggestion will not stop a reader from voting without reading all of the posted stories. It just makes it simpler to do so.
If I decide to rate the story without reading the remaining posted chapters, there is no reason why I need to go to the story's introductory page, select the last posted chapter, and go to the bottom of the chapter in order to rate the story. Switch Blayde's suggestion allows me to rate the story from whatever chapter I am in when I reach the bottom of the chapter.
Maybe all that's needed is a link after the link to the next chapter that will take you to the end of the last chapter where the voting is.
Maybe all that's needed is a link after the link to the next chapter that will take you to the end of the last chapter where the voting is.
Seriously- is it so hard for someone to click on the story link at the top of the page, then click on the last chapter & go to the end of the story to vote???
If they feel strongly enough to vote on something they haven't read, then that bit of effort is nothing.
If it is too much effort, then don't vote.
Voting on a story you haven't read, based on the bit you did read, is no different from 1 bombing a story because there was something in it you didn't like.
Having a "Jump to last chapter" link on all other chapters (or the vote box itself) just isn't necessary. Just make use of what is already there.
Voting on a story you haven't read, based on the bit you did read, is no different from 1 bombing a story because there was something in it you didn't like.
I disagree.
If I start a story that I don't like because of the content, I don't finish it, BUT I don't vote on it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a story that is too badly written to read. And it's not 1-bombing. I never gave a story a 1 because I go by the description and not the number. A 1 is something like "you call this a story?" I've never come upon a story that didn't try to be a story so I never gave a story a 1.
Voting on a story you haven't read, based on the bit you did read, is no different from 1 bombing a story because there was something in it you didn't like.
I recall bookmarking a new story that did not have enough votes for a rating, but did not get around to reading it for several days. By then several chapters had been posted. I tried to read the story, but the grammar and sentence structure was so poor that I had to stop and focus on the sentences in the paragraph in order to understand what the author was trying to say. I suspect English was not the author's native language. The entire first chapter was like that. Extremely difficult to read and understand.
Ratings are given to a story for several reasons. One of those reasons is to warn other readers that there is a problem with a story. There is absolutely no way I was going to read the posted chapters in order to vote, so I went to the end of the story and rated it as a 3.
That is very different from 1-bombing a story because I don't like the author or the types of activities contained in the story. That was just me rating the quality of the story.